I believe so. When joining a custom game there's an option for you to invite people to your "squad", which translates into party basically. I like the idea, but I wish they tried a bit harder. It would be nice if the people in my squad/party showed up as their own color on the in-game radar, for example. Or if the "squad" spawning meant spawning with your squad/party and not just a random team member.

Seconding the helicopter controller issues. Seriously, they're terrible. The heli controls work in GTA4 because theyre pretty straightforward and logical, while they seem random and difficult just for the sake of it in BF. For fucks sake, they werent even this bad in Modern Combat!